<p>Finally starting the college shopping process :)
This weekend we're going to start with a laptop.</p>
<p>My school is offering to sell Dells (Dell Latitude E6420) for $1600. It comes with a lot of things and the campus computer service guarantees to repair any damage for all four years, but I think I'd rather purchase a cheaper laptop since anything from school bookstores are ridiculously expensive.</p>
<p>What do you recommend?
I'm looking for something thin-ish, comes with a built in webcam (doesn't have to, but it'd be nice so I can finally Skype when I'm away!), and isn't problematic or complicated. I'm not tech savvy.</p>
<p>13 inch Macbook Pro…you pretty much laid out the criteria for getting one. Not tech savvy, emphasis on thin and light, baller webcam.</p>
<p>And since you’re going to the College of the Holy Cross, you won’t need Windows for anything special, like engineering applications. They run about $1300 including Applecare if you get the education discount. But it will last for four years, and that is likely the most important part, having it be your only computer. If you want even cheaper, HPs are good too. Check out their website for things. Since this is an investment, I’d honestly get something over $1000 so it lasts, or at least has components that are a little more robust.</p>
<p>Yeah I just got a 13 inch MacBook Pro for college. Very thin and light weight. Overall I love it (have had a couple problems with my internet, but I think that’s our internet service that’s messed up, not the Mac so much). It’s $1200 for the 13 inch, minus the education discount $100, $100 iTunes/Mac App store gift card, and $100 towards a printer and free Lion upgrade.</p>
<p>Just so you know, the new 13 inch Macbook Air that was just released last week is actually faster than the current Macbook Pro and is upgradable to a core i7 processor which isn’t even offered on the pro. Plus it’s the thinnest laptop on the market.</p>
<p>So the only arguments for buying a macbook over any other thin 13 inch with better specs and half the price are that macs are easy to use, thin and light, really good, and have a baller webcam? what the **** is wrong with the world?</p>
<p>some people prefer OS X, I could have gotten any computer for college but I got a MacBook Pro because I like how it looks and I wanted to switch things up a little.</p>
<p>Not that I’m saying Macbook pro’s are worth it, because I’m buying a laptop that has a dual-core 2.5Ghz processor with 4gb RAM, that costs $380. That’s a fifth of the price of the macbook. If you like throwing away money for less performance because it’s the popular thing to do, go ahead with a Mac.</p>
find the prettiest any other windows loaded laptop you can find
pay some computer nerd to install ubuntu on it
and there you go… still going to be for a significant fraction of the price.</p>
<p>@rymd: I’m going off of what the OP wants. Now, I use Ubuntu, and I like it a lot, but it can be frustrating (for example, I can’t add songs to my iPod [still wishing I had my Sansa Clip], and other various hassles). If the OP said, I want something cheap, nerdy, and has some fun stuff incorporated into owning it, then yes, I’d recommend that.</p>
<p>Paying a thousand dollars or more for a college laptop is ridiculous. You can get a fairly powerful laptop that will run most games for $500. If you’re not planning on gaming, there’s no reason to spend more than $300. Don’t you have college bills to spend that money on? Frivolous luxuries like a brand new quad core Mac aren’t a good investment for anyone who’s taking out any amount of loans for college.</p>
<p>Kudryavka: Your statement regarding gaming is simply inaccurate. If someone wants to play games pre 2006, sure. However, newer (doesn’t even have to be that recent) games will just decimate most laptops, especially because the integrated graphics on the lower end laptops will just choke.</p>
<p>With a desktop, your statement is pretty close, but you’d have to be a smart shopper and build it yourself.</p>
<p>The second statement made by Kudryavka is correct. Buying a laptop for performance is stupid. Use the laptop for the portability, build a desktop if you want power.</p>
<p>With computer components, you get diminishing returns for higher priced product. In the lower ends of the market, CPUs such as the phenom 2 560 are a lot more powerful than the althlon 455 while the price differential is barely more than 20 USD and GPUs such as an AMD 5670 are several times more powerful than the 5570 , but only costing 10 dollars more. Once you get over CPUs such as the 955 or i5 750/ i5 2550, the performance increases become numerically less, and a lot less noticeable. Part of the reason is because more expensive components might have newer and more gimmicky features such as 6 cores, or hyperthreading that programs do not take advantage of. Another reason is that the processor has already reached a point where it handles programs so well, the only bottlenecks occur else where. The main reason is probably because it just isn’t very much more powerful than cheaper high end components.</p>
<p>This is exemplified in laptops. Not only are parts less powerful due to laptop constraints such as power and space, price differentials between different tiers of products is more.</p>
<p>Buying a 1000 dollar laptop for durability is stupid. It is a much better idea to buy two 500 dollar laptops over the lifespan of the 1000 dollar laptops. Computer technology improves very fast; the second 500 dollar laptop is likely to be more powerful than the 1k laptop.</p>
<p>Spending more money for prebuilt computers doesn’t guarantee a more robust product.
First of all, the laptop manufactures don’t make most of the components in the laptops, same with desktop computers. Intel makes all the intel processors. Nvidia makes all the nvidia GPUs, although for graphics cards, they sell the GPUs to GFX card companies( a lot of times they are also MOBO manufacturers) and the GFX card companies finish the retail product. The processors in different laptops will be the same.
Secondly, prebuilt computers cheap out where ever they can. They often give you barebones motherboards with old lowend chipsets. The RAM they use is often off brand. The worse product they cheap out on is probably the power supply.</p>
<p>You have 1600 dollars.
I recommend buying a 400 dollar laptop and spending the rest on building a desktop if you need power.</p>
<p>I bought a refurbished Dell Latitude from the Dell Outlet website, and am very happy with it. The reburbished machines are often ones that were returned because of a minor problem and then were fixed and extensively tested. There are also periodically 15% off coupon codes for the Dell Outlet website, which you can find on a google search. The end result is you can get a nearly new $1200 laptop for $700.</p>
<p>DH just got an HP pavilion for $349. Nice. One kid has a Dell that’s a workhorse. Maybe $500, last summer. Then, there’s the one with the $1200 Mac- cracked screen, graphics card went within 3 months. (You can google these issues.)</p>
<p>We’ve been watching the so-called college special pricing for many years and they are always far more than you need to spend. Unless you are an engineer or similar, running multiple serious mem and processor hog programs, plus multiple graphics programs (photoshop and etc.) To me, the gaming is not justification to spend over $1000 on a laptop, unless you are wealthy. More important, OP didn’t mention gaming. </p>
<p>I’m with Frickin; translated: most kids don’t need an exhorbitantly priced computer. It’s a marketing thing that works for the mfrs. </p>
<p>ps. IME, July-Aug is always the best pricing opp on computers. Don’t settle for the college’s $1600 “deal.” Go shopping.</p>
<p>The only thing you need to ensure is that your computer matches the college’s specs to interface with their network and accept their anti-virus or other progrms. Not an issue right now as all new computers (that I know of) do. Check the college’s IT site or call.</p>
<p>@bearsfan092, I ditched my desktop and game only on a $400 laptop (marked down from $500, to be fair). It won’t run Crysis or what have you, but pretty much anything else is manageable if you dial down the settings. I suppose it depends what specific games you’re looking at, though, since I don’t play shooters other than TF2 and Quake Live, and strategy, RTS, puzzle, etc. games tend to be a lot easier on the graphics. Still, spending SIXTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS on a computer as a college freshman that is going to be taking on debt for the next 4 or 5 years just seems irresponsible to me. If you really must play the intense games, you can probably do it on a much smaller budget than that, even if you aren’t quite as miserly as me.</p>